Hanse Orga celebrates it's 25th anniversary.
Since it's founding in 1984, Hanse Orga has been directing it's focus on the development of software for cash and liquidity management. During these years, the IT landscape has changed dramatically, going from the so-called mainframe era to personal computers. Our first customers (Texaco and Agfa Gaevert) used our software Moneta® on an IBM XT with a memory of 256 KB and a 10 MB hard drive. As operating system we used Concurrent DOS instead of MS DOS because of its multi-user capability. The development environment was an in-house development based on the language Pascal.
The first version of Moneta® focused on the optimization of a company's liquidity and short and medium-term investment/borrowing. 25 years ago, our central topic already was "liquidity from your own sources": how do companies gain independence from banks and use all fixed or unused liquidity of the group, borrow less outside capital from the banks and tie up less capital in the company. Today, this would be described as "Working Capital Management".
25 years ago, this topic was merely known in the United States, France and to a certain degree in the Benelux countries. Companies and universities in Germany increasingly focused on accounting and controlling in the 1970s and 1980s.
Liquidity management was of no importance to many companies, even major corporations. Either you had sufficient funds, or, if liquidity was needed, you went to your house bank. Only very few large companies had finance departments as we know them today, and they were concentrated in the chemical and automobile manufacturing sectors.
A statement often made by executives for finance and accounting was that they did not want to antagonize their banks for small interest profits/losses.
The following years up to 1990 saw the rapid rise of SAP which made a name throughout the world by developing modern software systems for large companies in the area of finance management and accounting. SAP accomplished that their systems were used by almost all large German companies. The companies focused on accounting and controlling rather than liquidity management.
We were 20 years ahead of the times because we wanted to convince companies in Germany of the importance of liquidity planning. Early information of differences between the planned cash flow and the actual incoming and outgoing payments are an early indicator for many risks in the operative business (outstanding money from customer payments, subsidiary has shortfalls in payment, etc.). Moneta® was developed because these daily variance analyses could only be achieved using modern IT technology and a new method for cash flow calculation. Since then, Moneta® has been providing key figures and cash flow information daily for several hundred companies in addition to the data from the P/L statement and the balance sheet. The actual cash flow and liquidity planning figures are now an essential part of the management and planning of any company.
From 1984 to 1995, banks in Germany (and France) began standardizing the communication with their customers. The resulting standardized processing of bank data (bank statements, payments, confirmations, etc.) is still unparalleled. This standard contributed to the rationalization of accounting systems and cash and liquidity management systems in both countries. Today, there are two standard interfaces to the banks in Germany (FTAM and EBICS), in France, these standard interfaces are called ETEBAC 3 and ETEBAC 5.
In the mid-90s, companies were still less interested in liquidity than in "Shareholder Value" and "Value at Risk". In 2000, Hanse Orga hired consultants and product managers who, together with scientists from universities and business schools, developed a risk management software to be used in companies. Because of these developments, we were able, starting in 2003, to acquire projects and customers in this segment and further develop Moneta® to be a portfolio management and risk management system that meets international accounting standards (IFRS).
In the following years, Hanse Orga continued to develop Moneta® into a powerful treasury system that the users in large international corporations such as pharmaceutical companies and international energy companies used to establish in-house banks for foreign exchange and interest management in so-called Coordination Centers in Belgium or Luxembourg. At the same time, we developed interfaces to SAP to perform postings according to national and international accounting standards (HGB, IFRS, US-GAAP).
In 1996 we started a new project for bank reconciliation into the SAP accounting system SAP R/3 FI. We were already able to directly access SAP accounts online (RFC) to read open items, match them with the payment receipts and post them directly in SAP. This was a great improvement in regard to managing receivables and decreasing manual tasks in the accounting departments.
During this period, we developed a liquidity planning system that was largely integrated in SAP for a large publishing house with extensive processes that were supported by SAP systems. All cash flow figures of incoming and outgoing payments were entered in a planning in a value date-based reporting with actual figures. Based on this, daily target/actual variances could be determined as early warning indicators. The SAP standard did not provide comparable functions at that time, it only had a cash budget management based on posted transactions, but these only provided an incomplete result that was not value date-based.
In 1999, Hanse Orga was approached by SAP to redevelop their liquidity planning concept directly in SAP, using the SAP standard development tools (ABAP, Workbench, etc.) on site in Waldorf. Hanse Orga then developed the SAP Liquidity Planner over the next 12 months with 6 of their developers. The finished product was one of 6 modules of the new SAP CFM (Corporate Finance Management).
As SAP sought a different focus with their products (Dispute Management, Distiller, etc.), we decided to redevelop our product lines AutoBank® and Moneta® directly in SAP whereas before they were only connected to SAP with the help of interfaces.
SAP did not have a real alternative for either of those products except for the Liquidity Planner that we had developed. The Liquidity Planner only performed the assignment of actual data, the planning had to be projected individually using SAP BW SEM. The Cash Management of SAP was still based on a concept from the 1970s: post first and then calculate the cash flow based on those figures. We felt that neither solution was very user-friendly and believed in our success if we redeveloped Moneta® for SAP® and AutoBank® for SAP®.
We would be able to draw on our experiences and expected to be successful with the integrated "in SAP" approach and additionally thought that this was a useful step to introduce our products in the international markets.
We were able to achieve both: With AutoBank® for SAP® and Moneta® for SAP® we won 100 new customers in the course of only 24 months. We have had subsidiaries in France and the Netherlands since 2005 that were both successful in introducing our products in the international markets quickly.
In September of 2006 we introduced our third product line, the ipcNavigator®. The ipcNavigator® is a so-called "Payment Factory" that provides bank communication to all important banks, worldwide, and payment transactions integrated in SAP. It allows, flexibly and transparently, the concentration of liquidity and global payment transactions from one central application.
Because of the three areas we provide our services in, product development in the area of treasury management and accounting, consulting services and SAP consulting, we were able to keep the market leadership for Finance Solutions even in difficult times. The combination of business and technology know-how and the great number of successful projects with international companies such as Philips, BMW, Danfoss, ThyssenKrupp, Münchner Rück, Metro or AMB Generali is what makes us so successful.
The product strategy to develop financial management software in SAP to facilitate a standardized SAP system landscape, feasibility and integration without interfaces is unique in the world. It allows us to install our software directly in the existing SAP system and go live without additional investments for hard or software. This cost saving element is what makes our solutions superior to those of our competitors in regard to cost and efficiency as well.
Our new product developments always anticipate market trends. In June 2008 we received the SAP certification "SAP® Certified - Powered by SAP NetWeaver®" for our "FinanceSolutions 4.0" as an official confirmation for the high level of integration and quality of our products.
At the end of the year, Hanse Orga became SAP Software Solution Partner which further confirms our position.
Our goals are clear: Further develop our national market leadership for Finance Solutions, enter new strategic co-operations and advance the market leadership for Finance Solutions in Europe and promote sales worldwide.
Hanse Orga History:
- 1984 – Foundation Hanse Orga
- 1985 – Launch Moneta® – Treasury System1994 – Launch AutoBank® – Automatic Bank Reconciliation
- 1999 – Hanse Orga develops the "SAP Liquidity Planner"2000 – Hanse Orga solutions are integrated in the SAP Framework
- 2004 – Hanse Orga expands to international markets2005 – Foundation Hanse Orga France
- 2006 – Foundation Hanse Orga Benelux2007 – Launch ipcNavigator® for SAP® (Payment Factory Solution)
- 2008 – SAP certification of product lines AutoBank® for SAP®, Moneta® for SAP®, ipcNavigator® and ebXchange® under the name FinanceSolutions 4.0
– SAP Software Partnership
- 2009 – Launch ebXGlobal® for SAP® (Bank Communication, Payment Portal and Cash Management)
|
